


Cover Blown

by misscai



Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Blackwatch Era, Gen, Mild Language, Recruitment, although reader is not a kid, gratuitous use of the term 'kid'
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-23
Updated: 2018-02-23
Packaged: 2019-03-22 23:51:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,863
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13775238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/misscai/pseuds/misscai
Summary: Reader is running a safehouse for agents of Overwatch. When some bad guys figure it out, Gabe is there to save the day.





	Cover Blown

**Author's Note:**

> ¯\\_(ツ)_/¯

Someone was following you. You had felt them all night, the eyes on your back. It could easily be just some creep from the bar—college towns were rife with roving drunks—but you knew better. You slipped your headphones in your ears the moment you stepped off of the bar's porch seating area, casually scrolling through your phone as you did so, as if you were turning on music as opposed to activating a signal scrambler so that you couldn't be remotely tracked. Then you shouldered your bag and started to walk to your house.

You stopped in the grocery store on the way, keeping your pace leisurely but turning corners quick, flowing in and out of aisles until you lost the feeling of a stranger's gaze. Then you headed out of the store, ignoring the odd look from the cashier as you exited without any bags. The rustling plastic wouldn't have done you any good.

Your house was in the third row back from the ocean, nestled among a line of other pastel-colored clapboards with puns for names. You had chosen Once Upon A Tide for your own Easter-egg-yellow cottage. You let yourself in the back door, where you couldn't be seen by the streetlight. You locked the door quickly behind you, keeping the lights off and abandoning your shoes by the door. The keys you kept clutched within one hand. Something still felt off, and you couldn't put a finger on it. You made your way over to the kitchen, reaching out for the drawer beside the stove.

“Looking for that Ruger, eh?” The voice came from the hallway, gravelly and smug, followed by the distinctive noise of a safety clicking off. You froze. “It's a common hiding place. Top kitchen drawer, bedside table, a shelf in the hall closet. You should be less predictable if you're going to be a spy.” The man was short but broad-shouldered, a figure that you had very little hope of winning a struggle against. You inched your hand along the side of the counter, but he _tsk_ ed at you. “Don't touch that knife drawer either.”

“What do you want?”

“All of your information on the Overwatch agents you've been harboring.” He stepped into the kitchen, the pistol leveled at your midsection.

“I don't have any—”

“Don't play dumb with me,” he snapped, stepping closer until the gun was pressed to your skin and the countertop dug into your back. “I know you're not alone here. Who are those men?”

“Cousins,” You said with a shrug, earning a slap across your face for the blatant lie. Your lip split beneath the man's knuckles.

“Tell me who they are.” You licked the blood off of your mouth and spat it onto the floor. Conveniently, the man's boots were in the line of fire. He snarled, recoiling just long enough for you to knock the gun loose and kick it away beneath the refrigerator. Hands encircled your windpipe. “I don't need a weapon to kill you. Tell me what the fuck I want to know.”

“They're... my... cousins,” you gasped out, squirming against his grasp and kicking hard at his shin. The man bent you backwards over the counter, banging the back of your head against the overhead cabinets in the process and making you see stars. Or maybe that was the lack of oxygen. You didn't know. He pinned your legs with his waist, keeping one hand on your throat and unsheathing a knife from his belt with the other.

“I'll only ask nicely one more time.” He pressed the blade to your cheek, a stinging pressure at the corner of your eye. “Who are the men and what information did they give you?” You kept your mouth closed, even as the knife bit into your skin and brought tears to your eyes. “Tell me.”

“No.” Your voice was a wheeze, choked off at the end by the tightening of the man's fingers. All of your squirming did nothing against the solidity of his body weight. Your vision went spotty, your nails clawing uselessly at the marble counter. “They'll... _kill you_... for this,” you coughed.

“For what?” He let out a cruel laugh, letting you breathe for just a moment so that he could draw a second knife cut down your face, a half-inch from the first. “For killing their little spy? I have men all over this town. Your agent friends won't get near me without me knowing. Now, what are they doing here?”

“If you have so many men and so much information,” you panted, catching your breath, “why don't you know already?”

“You've got a smart mouth,” the man said, sneering as he hauled you upright and forced you to the bathroom. The tub had been filled—how long he'd been there, lurking around your house, you had no idea. He kicked your knees out from under you, grasping the back of your neck and holding your head beneath the water until your lungs ached. “You think you matter to them? You're expendable. You're wasting your life for nothing.”

“It's the psychological game now, huh?” You snickered even as you spluttered water from your mouth. The man growled, shoving your face back into the tub. The seconds dragged on endlessly, until the need to breathe forced you to inhale a lungful of water. _So this is it_ , you thought, chest burning and vision going dark. At least you wouldn't have to listen to that man's blathering any more.

As you were dancing on the cusp of unconsciousness, there was a pressure on your chest and then on your lips, then back to your chest again until the water burst its way out of your throat. You rolled onto your side and retched until you could breathe properly again, the soft murmuring of men's voices a backdrop to your recovery. Someone's hand was on your back.

“Easy, kid.” You squinted, following the tan-skinned arm back up to its source.

“Reyes,” you panted, voice hoarse. “I didn't tell him. I didn't...”

“Easy.” He squeezed your shoulder. “He's handled. You okay?” You nodded, pushing yourself up to a seated position and rubbing at your throat.

“I didn't tell him anything.”

“I know.”

“He knew about the agents here. You have to take this place off the safehouse list, he said he had people watching the whole town.”

“I'll put in the order.” He tilted your chin to one side, observing the parallel cuts next to your left eye. “Those look bad.”

“They'll heal. Make me look tough.” You took a deep breath, pushing wet hair away from your face and standing up. “I'll ditch this place in the morning, get out of town, set up a new safehouse somewhere. How should I contact you when—”

“No.” That stopped you short of the threshold. Gabriel stood up, his SEP-enhanced form taking up the rest of the space in the already-small bathroom. “Overwatch has put you in enough danger.”

“I can handle it,” you insisted.

“You almost died tonight.”

“And I've learned from it. I'll keep the gun with me from now on.”

“That won't stop anyone who's serious about killing you.” Gabriel sighed, rubbing a hand through his goatee. “Get some rest. Jack's securing the area now; we'll stay overnight to be sure there's no more trouble.” He stepped past you, out into the hallway. You grabbed his wrist.

“The body,” you said. “Where is it?”

“Handled,” he told you gruffly. You gave him a long look, then nodded and closed the bathroom door.

.

 

They were arguing when you finished cleaning yourself up. You leaned against the wall in the shadows of the hallway, toweling off your hair and listening to the two men in the living room. They were trying to be quiet, it was obvious, but there was only so much they could do. It was a small house.

“... never meant to stay involved,” Gabriel hissed. “We needed this place for one mission and that was all. It never should have gone this far.”

“None of Overwatch's enemies could have suspected an anonymous civilian. It was safer to use someone already established in town than—”

“Oh, we're _using_ civilians now?”

“That's not what I meant.”

“Then how are you going to explain it to the UN?” There was a pause, a rustling of fabric as Gabriel crossed his arms. “You won't, will you? You'll foist it off on Blackwatch. Another civilian caught up in our dirty work.”

“Would it be wrong?” Jack was rising to the challenge now. “It was your idea to turn this place into a safehouse for your agents to wait out trouble. It only makes sense that trouble followed them.” Tension bled down the hallway, raising the hair on your arms. It was so silent that you could hear Gabriel's knuckles crack as he flexed his hand. You wanted to step out and defend Gabriel—after all, it had been _your_ idea to go on the safehouse list, not his. But you knew you wouldn't curry any favor with him by interfering in one of his and Jack's arguments. It would be like stepping into a dogfight.

“What are we going to do?” His voice was low, dangerously controlled. 

“Same thing we do with all the FUBAR safehouses: relocate the civilian and cut ties. It's the safest thing we can do.”

“Bullshit. They won't just wave us out of town if they know who we are. They'll track us down.”

“Not past town limits. Not when their leader is dead.”

“We don't know if he was the leader, or how big this gang is.”

“So what's your idea? Constant surveillance? Armed guards? That's no way to live.”

“I agree.”

“So then what?”

“A place in Overwatch.”

“Gabe, are you serious? A completely untrained civilian doesn't belong in Overwatch!”

“We train people all the time. What's so different?”

“Overwatch is a recruitment-based organization. As in, we recruit already-talented and already-trained people. We don't do the training from the ground up.”

“Then what about Blackwatch?”

“Don't be ridiculous. That's an elite task force.”

“It's _my_ task force. I've taken in strays before.”

“Who, McCree? He's a gunslinger, a crack shot. He aced every test we gave him.”

“He was a gang member.”

“A talented one.”

“You think this kid isn't talented? After managing to wrangle information out of an attacker while drowning in a bathtub? After keeping our agents— _both_ our agents, Jack—safe for two years without neighbors batting an eye?”

“And today? How do you explain that?”

“It was my fault. I was the last one to come to the safehouse. I must have been careless on my way into town.” It wasn't true. Gabriel was always the most careful agent that you harbored. There was no way that he had been the one to get you discovered. “Give the kid to me. I'll find a place in Blackwatch. I'll do the training myself.” There was a long silence, then Jack sighed.

“No leaving the base until I clear it.”

“Fine. Kid.” Gabriel didn't raise his voice; he knew you were there. “Pack your bags. We're going to Switzerland.”


End file.
